Fraud prevention firm: keep SSDI public

Somebody — a group of somebodies who ought to darned well know what they’re talking about — really gets it: public access to the Social Security Death Index — the Death Master File (DMF) as it’s formally called — isn’t the cause of identity theft, but rather — used properly — the solution.

But nothing in the article suggested that genealogists ought to be singled out as the bad guys. Intrigued, I took a closer look.

ID Analytics works, it says, in the broad field of “business challenges connected to consumer identity behavior.”1 And one of its components is called id:a labs, described as “a multidisciplinary group of mathematicians, computer scientists, economists, financial experts, cognitive scientists and advisors from ID Analytics and other respected institutions (that) conducts research and analysis in the areas of identity fraud.”2

They’re the ones who did this study and another in the fall of 2011 focusing on identity theft in the United States. Let me share with you some of the key findings of these two reports set out by id:a labs in its press releases.

From the most recent study, released Monday, we learn:

• “The identities of nearly 2.5 million deceased Americans are used improperly to apply for credit products and services each year.”3

• Of those, less than one third — fewer than 800,000 cases — involve “deceased Americans’ identities intentionally targeted for misuse on applications for credit products and cell phone services.”4

• By far most of the fraud cases occur when “an identity manipulator inadvertently used the SSN of a deceased person.”5 (These manipulators are basically making up sets of numbers hoping some work.)

And, we learn from both the most recent study and a September 2011 study, the problem isn’t limited to misuse of information about people who have died — and so whose information could possibly be included in the Death Master File:

• “Nearly 500,000 children under the age of 18 have had their identities stolen by a parent.”7

• “A growing number of adult children have used their parent’s identity information for fraudulent reasons, with more than two million elderly victims in the past few years.”8

With studies like these, it’s pretty clear that stealing the identities of people who might be on the SSDI — the Death Master File — is only one part of the identity theft problem. It’s not just the dead but the living whose identities are being stolen.

And what do folks like this think is the answer to that part of the problem that does involve the identities of the dead? They answered that question in the id:a labs blog:

We at ID Analytics don’t think that ceasing publication of the (Death Master File) is the best way to deal with this problem. …

We suggest that the best way to solve the improper use of deceased people’s SSNs is to keep this list public and increase its use as a validity check in the examination of SSNs. If the list is very public and widely used, no dead SSN could be successfully used.9

But that’s the beauty of it – they’re a “fraud prevention” company, and their advice supports the genealogists’ position! 😎

Judy G. Russell
on April 25, 2012 at 1:41 pm

I hear you. But if Congress isn’t listening to us about having a genealogist explain the problem to them, they’re not much more likely to listen to us about who else can explain it to them. (I do believe, however, that efforts are being made to encourage the various committees to hear these sorts of witnesses.)

Mary
on April 25, 2012 at 5:39 pm

Keeping the DMF available to public and then have lenders use it more frequently as a validity check is going to help stop identify theft fraud from occurring more in dead people ? Really ? Really ??

It seems the best way to deal with preventing identity fraud with dead people is for lenders to use stronger services (IDA Labs…come on) to help them deter fraud and for my information to stop getting into the hands of organizations I don’t trust (but claim I should trust).

Thank you ID Analytics for bringing some common sense into the discussion!

There are much better ways of solving this problem but it seems to me like they’re just looking for a quick, easy fix (or what they think is one, anyway) rather than actually trying to find a solution.